


History Reinvented

by wesleysgirl



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-27
Updated: 2012-05-27
Packaged: 2017-11-06 02:52:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/413914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wesleysgirl/pseuds/wesleysgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for the <a href="http://soft-princess.livejournal.com/258153.html">No One Knows Giles/Xander Song-Ficathon</a>: Alanis Morissette's "Hands Clean."</p>
    </blockquote>





	History Reinvented

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [No One Knows Giles/Xander Song-Ficathon](http://soft-princess.livejournal.com/258153.html): Alanis Morissette's "Hands Clean."

Giles thinks about him sometimes, but only when he's very drunk, and then only in derogatory terms that keep the pain of the situation at bay. He insults Xander in his mind, thinks terrible things about the younger man that he'd never dream of thinking when sober. Things that would hurt Xander deeply to hear. Things that Giles vomits up on the nights he's had one glass too many (on the nights he's bothered with a glass at all, and he often doesn't.)

He gave up the Council two years ago. There were people better suited to the job, and, as he told Buffy, new times called for new management. He'd stayed around long enough to pass on what he knew, and long enough to realize that things were too different. He didn't fit anymore. It was time to move on.

Moving on, Giles knows, isn't about sitting in one's home most of the time and getting thoroughly pissed every Friday and Saturday night. At least he has enough control of himself to keep it from being more often than that.

Moving on is about letting go of the past. It's about washing one's hands clean of complications and mistakes and infatuations.

In the bathroom, literally washing traces of his most recent orgasm from his skin, Giles looks up at himself in the mirror and discovers that he's gone from middle-aged to old, seemingly overnight, and is so shocked that he stands there staring at himself, the water running from the faucet down the drain.

There's what might be a knock at his door.

Giles swallows, blinks. Shuts off the water and dries his hands. Through it all he tells himself that there's no one there, that it must have been the wind. He hasn't had a visitor for months. The housekeeper is there twice a week, but she has her own key.

The knock comes again.

Looking down, Giles sees that he's still wearing the t-shirt and sweatpants that he put on yesterday beneath his dressing gown. He pulls the robe more tightly around himself and goes down the hall to open the door.

Once he never would have opened the door without checking first to see who was on the other side, but apparently he doesn't care all that much what happens, because he turns the handle and swings the door inward and stands gaping for the second time in five minutes, but this time at Xander, tall and fit and awkward and impossibly beautiful.

"Hey," Xander says, with a hesitant lift of his hand. "Sorry for not calling."

There's a long silence, and then, "I didn't know you were in England," Giles says stupidly, still staring.

"How would you? You haven't talked to anyone in months. Do you _ever_ check your answering machine?" Xander gets a sturdier grip on his bag and steps inside, not waiting for an invitation.

Some of the things that Giles taught him are still there, at least.

"I turned the volume off," Giles says. He follows Xander into the kitchen, where Xander sets his bag down and goes to the cupboard, opening it and taking down a clean glass. He fills it with water and gives it to Giles, pulling out a chair as if expecting Giles to sit.

Giles sits.

"And you didn't think anyone would be worried about you?" Xander asks. "When was the last time you had something to eat?"

He's lost weight, he knows, but he hadn't realized it was so obvious.

"Giles?"

Ah. He's taken too long in answering. "Yesterday?" he hazards.

Xander makes a frustrated hmph and goes to the refrigerator, looking inside. "Well, at least you've got food."

Bitterness rises up in Giles, threatening to choke him. "If Buffy sent you," he says coldly, "then I'd really rather you turned around and left."

"Buffy doesn't 'send' me," Xander says. His back is to Giles. "And before you get the wrong idea, she didn't _ask_ me, either. It was all me."

Giles feels suddenly shaky, the pit of his stomach hot and his hands icy cold. He gets up almost blindly, ignoring Xander's questioning voice behind him, and manages to make his way up the stairs to the bedroom, where he lies down, not knowing what else to do and incapable of any of it even if he did.

Xander's hand, warm, is on his forehead. "Giles?"

"Go away, Xander," Giles says, so weary that he thinks this must be what it feels like when one is waiting to die.

"You're crazy," Xander says gently. "I'm not going, not again."

"You used to have much better manners," Giles says, looking at a tiny crease in the fabric of Xander's trousers because looking up at the boy's -- the _man's_ \-- face is more than he can bear.

"Because I did what you told me to?" Xander sounds amused. "What makes you think that's changed?"

Giles shivers. "Oh, I don't know. Perhaps the fact that I told you to leave and you didn't?" It's a valiant attempt at sarcasm, but one which falls woefully flat.

"Well, see, I might be slow sometimes," Xander says. He manhandles Giles up into a sitting position on the edge of the bed, kneels at Giles' feet like an exquisite statue brought to life, his hands holding Giles'. "I know I'm not a quick study. There were lessons you had to teach me a dozen times. More. And even when I didn't have a clue, I always tried, because it was you that was telling me to." His eye, the good one, is shining with sincerity; the sight of it brings hot tears to Giles' throat. "It took me a long time to realize that there's one time -- just one -- when you didn't get to make the decisions."

"I told you to go," Giles says, and he's not talking about here and now.

Xander nods and strokes his thumb over the backs of Giles' hands. "I know. And I always did what you told me, so I went. But it wasn't the right thing to do, was it." It's not a question.

"I thought it was," Giles says. "I had to give you that chance."

"I love you for it." Xander bends his head down, resting his forehead on Giles' knee in a posture so familiar that Giles becomes hard instantly, as if a button has been pressed. "But I don't want to be anywhere else. Just with you." The words are barely above a whisper. "And I'll do anything you tell me. Anything else. But I won't leave you again."

A hot surge floods Giles; he's filled with it, power and confidence and a love that he's denied for nearly a year. "You know what I want," he says, fierce and commanding, and Xander lifts his face and looks at Giles with such adoration that Giles rewards him with a rough hand curled around the back of his neck.

Xander trembles as he takes out Giles' cock and licks it, then slides his lips around the tip and sucks at it hard in exactly the way Giles remembers. Despite what Xander thinks, there are ways in which he was a quick study, and this was one of them. Lips and tongue work together to bring Giles to the edge so quickly that it's nearly embarrassing, and the entire time Xander is gazing up at him with that same look of adulation.

Giles stops him with a squeeze of his hand. "Get up," he says. "Turn around."

He doesn't need to tell Xander to remove his trousers; the younger man does it automatically, as if no time at all has passed. There's nothing nearby to use, so Giles strokes his own erection, wet with Xander's saliva, then slips his hand around and finds Xander's mouth.

Xander knows what he wants -- sucks both fingers in avidly, slicking them, even daring to let his teeth scrape at the skin there.

When Giles pushes his fingers into Xander's tight arse, Xander groans long and low and drops his head forward, creating a perfect line up the back of his spine, each vertebra visible. "You haven't been eating either," Giles says accusingly, and Xander trembles again. " _Answer me_."

"No," Xander agrees, pushing back eagerly onto Giles' fingers.

"You'll start again immediately," Giles says. He removes his fingers and caresses Xander's arse for a moment, lingering, before lining up his cock and working his way inside.

"Yes," Xander says, gasping as each thrust is a bit deeper than the last. "Yes, yes, yes." Giles doesn't know if he's answering or expressing his pleasure, and at that moment it's difficult to care.

"Good boy," Giles say, finally letting himself feel it. Xander remains still while he's fucked, which is just what Giles wants from him, his body an instrument for Giles to play. Giles thrusts harder, faster, deeper, the soft sounds that escape Xander's lips driving him on.

"It's been... too long." Xander pants the words, intending them as a warning, but Giles wants to reward the boy, not punish him, not now.

He reaches down and tugs at Xander's balls, three firm tugs that skirt the line between pain and gratification and have Xander coming in a wave of ecstasy, his body clenching down around Giles' and shuddering in Giles' arms. Giles comes, too, orgasm wrenched from him as unexpectedly as Xander had appeared on his doorstep, moaning his devotion into the nape of Xander's neck.

He pulls Xander down onto the bed immediately afterwards. He doesn't want there to be any confusion about what this is or isn't, not when there've been misunderstandings in the past. "You'll do everything that I tell you," he says, stroking Xander's hair. "Without question."

"Mm-hm." Xander yawns. "Except leave."

"Except leave," Giles agrees, because that's not what he wants. Never has been. He's already very nearly forgotten why he sent Xander away in the first place. Then, suddenly insecure, "This _is_ what you want, isn't it?"

Xander makes a frustrated sound and hitches himself up onto one elbow. God, he's so beautiful. "Yes," he says. "This is what I want. It's what I've always wanted."

"I've no idea why," Giles says. He's rarely this open; it doesn't fit. But there has to be a place for it here, and he has to carve that place out.

"Because you're... you're everything," Xander says. "Nothing else matters. _Nothing_. I _love_ you."

If Giles had written down the perfect words for Xander to speak, exactly what he needed to hear, it would have been those. And that, more than anything else, reassures him that this is right. "Good," he says, settling Xander's head down on his shoulder and relaxing. "Now go to sleep."

"Yes, Giles," Xander says obediently, and in the still-lit room, Giles smiles and allows himself to think about Xander as much as he likes.

>   
> 
> 
> _If it weren't for your maturity none of this would have happened  
>  If you weren't so wise beyond your years I would've been able to control myself  
>  If it weren't for my attention you wouldn't have been successful and  
>  If it weren't for me you would never have amounted to very much_  
> 

>   
>  _Ooh this could be messy  
>  But you don't seem to mind  
>  Ooh don't go telling everybody  
>  And overlook this supposed crime_   
> 

>   
>  _We'll fast forward to a few years later  
>  And no one knows except the both of us  
>  And I have honored your request for silence  
>  And you've washed your hands clean of this_   
> 

>   
>  _You're essentially an employee and I like you having to depend on me  
>  You're kind of my protege + one day you'll say you learned all you know from me  
>  I know you depend on me like a young thing would to a guardian  
>  I know you sexualize me like a young thing would and I think I like it_   
> 

>   
>  _Ooh this could get messy  
>  But you don't seem to mind  
>  Ooh don't go telling everybody  
>  And overlook this supposed crime_   
> 

>   
>  _We'll fast forward to a few years later  
>  And no one knows except the both of us  
>  And I have honored your request for silence  
>  And you've washed your hands clean of this_   
> 

>   
>  _What part of our history's reinvented and under rug swept?  
>  What part of your memory is selective and tends to forget?  
>  What with this distance it seems so obvious?_   
> 

>   
>  _\- Alanis Morissette's "Hands Clean"_   
> 

 

 

End.


End file.
